


a lunar phase

by Naolin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Apocalypse, Drowning, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Self-Sacrifice, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 00:17:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14124006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naolin/pseuds/Naolin
Summary: Sometimes you do things you don't want to. Or: Lona knows her life is worth giving up for everyone else. The only people who disagree are not who she had hoped would. She doesn't even know them.





	a lunar phase

The water is ice-cold. A million instances flash through Lona's mind: all the times she has dipped her toes and then run the other way with a shriek.  She has lived here her whole life, and in twenty four years she can count on her hands the times she braved going waist-deep into the water. Even in the Summer, the sun only lights the clouds, turning the whole sky blinding grey. The fog and rain drift through by day, not by season. Warm days don't warm the sea. Not here.

She wants to turn around and yell. (She wants to wade deep into the water with Dianna, wants to punch and kick the oncoming waves until she is laughing with salt water on her tongue.)  
  
Her legs are covered in goosebumps, the wind against her skin like needles. There is no backing down from this.

The beginning is the hardest, she tells herself. Like getting into a swimming pool. You'll get used to it. The waves come from her toes to her calves as she walks. She shivers, jaw clenched so tight that it hurts. At least her only audience is far behind her on the shore, unable to see the ugly tension on her face. Her hair is a frizzy mess in the wind. It has whipped her already sloppy braids even looser. Her bangs falls in her eyes like black threads, and she lets them.

Calves to waist. Easier, now. The rest of her is damp with mist, and she thinks that maybe this will help. Her skirt is clinging to her. The waves are starting to push her back. Two steps forward, one step back. She has to push herself each step. Up to her chest. Lona keeps her mouth a thin line, not wanting to choke as the waves splash up against her.

Dianna is on the shore with the elders, but Lona pictures the other girl at her side like an illusion of support. They have always been such a contrast. Lona is tall, her skin dark and freckled. But she is not the Chinese 'exotic beauty' that white people always want her to be. Her hair is not straight - it is messy and fussy in the constant mist. Her eyes are dull and grey, practically lifeless. Beside her, Dianna always seems that much shorter. That much prettier. Like a pale porcelain doll. Her opposite. Where Lona is shy and anxious, Dianna is outgoing, confident. This deep in the water, Dianna would already be submerged. She would be drowned, would be lost forever. Unlike Lona, that would actually mean something. It would be a sacrifice mourned, but that's not the point of all this. This isn't a sacrifice to evoke anything from those on land.

"You're so strong," she remembers Dianna telling her, quiet, shy. For once hiding behind her long, silver hair. She remembers vivid, crystalline blue eyes. "You're the only one who can do it."

They were both lies. Lona had felt the pulse of her mana, had tried not to look, but the glow of the halo was too bright. She had carefully trained her eyes on Dianna's face, knowing that the other girl would notice if her eyes so much as glanced up, but the shine down onto her bangs was enough.

Lona still can't bring herself to hate her magic.

Without it, would Dianna ever have been her friend? Her best friend?

She remembers sitting together in the dark of her apartment. Dianna never scolded her when she skipped work. Maybe she knew that Lona was scolding herself enough for a hundred people. She remembers magic lessons. Dianna taught her everything she knows, and laughed off any offering of payment with, "no way, no way. There are no good magic schools on the Oregon coast, that's not your fault. I'm not gonna charge you for it."

She had learned to make crystals sprout from pots of dirt with a tingle at her fingertips. How to draw salt circles that would fizzle into good luck and fill her apartment with a soothing, implacable scent. She had learned to pull at the mana in the air like threads, tugging and moving things without having to get up. She had learned, finally, finally, to do more than manifest a light behind lies. How to turn it off, sometimes.

And now she is learning to hold the moon together, how to keep the Earth spinning. The most powerful witch alive, but only for as long as it takes to be swept out to sea.

Lona stands her ground, neck-deep in the water now. The waves rock her from side to side; sometimes her toes leave the ground and she feels as if she is floating. Her wet hair clings to her cheeks, braids flowing with the current beneath the surface. 

"This is how it works," she remembers Dianna telling her in the dark. "If we don't want a moon fracture, a young witch needs to be sacrificed."

Lona wonders what it's like to grow up knowing what witches know. (She wonders what it's like to grow up with your own parents. What it's like to grow up knowing what you come from and knowing who that part of you is.) 

"Why not an older witch?" Lona had asked, then winced at her own callousness. "One with… Less life to lose?"

For a split second, Dianna's brow had furrowed in irritation. She quickly masked it with confusion, cocking her head to the side. "Because… that's not how it works."  
  
The waves are not moving her deeper. They are not carrying her away to drown. Lona's eyes flutter shut. Is she not enough? Is the ritual based on mourning, after all? Perhaps, because no one will mourn her, she isn't a good enough sacrifice.

Two hundred pairs of eyes on the shore burn into her back. A third of the city. Probably every witch in the area. She is so cold. She hopes the numbness kicks in soon. Sometimes her head dips underwater. She drifts three feet forward, five feet back. Her ankles tingle.

She feels magic at her feet.

Is this it? Sprouting crystals was one of the first spells she ever learned. A spell for beginners, a useless spell, one taught to her with Dianna's amused laughter behind every step of it. Is the sacrifice really rooted in this? She is rooted. Weighed down in place, feet flat on the sand. Shackles made of gemstone are conjuring around her ankles, growing and shifting. She sees the sparkle of them when she opens her eyes.

She longs to be deeper in the water, longs to be taken away from all of this, put out of her misery. The air in her lungs feels like it is running thin, like it is carrying frost. She wants to be useful. She wants the dispassionate gazes of strangers to carry something, _anything_. Gratitude, or compassion, or understanding. She wants some part of her to live on in these people, but she's left nothing behind with any of them, not so much as an impression.

The sea fights her. Crystals hold her in place and when the waves crash she cannot drift with them. She bends backwards and has to use her arms to come back upright, sputtering. But she is too far back to drown. She is supposed to be further up. The wind is loud, like it is running on the surface of the water, straight into her ears. Shaking her head only whips her own hair into her face, where is sticks.

Lona remembers the day the moon splintered. The warning sign before the fracture. The call to action, the premonition. It was strange to walk from the bus stop in the starlight, drinking smoothies with Dianna and pointing up at the shattering sky.

"I think you should do it," Dianna had said, as casually as she had encouraged Lona to buy a sweatshirt on sale. "You should be the sacrifice."

Lona had felt her fingers tremble, had stared down at the sidewalk and willed away nausea. She had prayed for the halo to come, but the road remained dark.

Dianna was lit only by moonbeams, beautiful and youthful, and added, "no one would miss you."

It has been hours now in the cold. She cannot tell if she is numb or if she is being pierced by so many pin-pricks that she cannot identify them all. She has gagged on salt water until she retched up stomach acid. She has cried silent tears and she has let out strangled sobs, drowned out by the crashing waves.

In her mind she begs them to let her come home. She does not know them, the witches on the shore, but she is one of them even so. She begs to walk home in dripping clothes like those rare Summer days, shivering but content. She begs to come back to her small apartment with its creaky doors and rotting steps, with its kitchen light that burned out a month ago. She begs for more days at her god-awful job, more days slouched deep in uncomfortable chairs, wearing uncomfortable headsets, having uncomfortable conversations. She begs for more nights crying herself to sleep because the day will start again tomorrow, she'll have to go back tomorrow, again and _again_ , for the rest of her life, for pennies.

She begs for more nights laying in the sand with Dianna, watching the stars and listening to the waves that once seemed so soothing. The only moments that had ever felt worth living for, spread apart by both their work schedules, by responsibilities, by boyfriends, by school. Feeling small and smaller still as they curled toward each other with laughter. She wishes her anxiety had ever left her for more than these scattered hours of her life.

She begs for someone, anyone, to care about her enough to tell her she does not have to drown. She begs herself to want to drown.

Her stomach grumbles and she almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of that. She has not eaten in days. She is catching her death from the frost of the waters as the sun goes down. It is bright and beautiful, all orange and pink like the lights of a traveling festival. Soon the moon will rise, and she will die so that it does not fall again. And she is hungry.

It's taking too long. She does not know much about the ritual - only what she's heard from Dianna. But this is too long. The tide should have taken her by now. The crystals are keeping her safe. Is she supposed to dispel them with her own magic? No. She isn't supposed to use any magic during this, she remembers that, specifically. She wonders if they are worried on the shore, if they are talking.

The crystals scratch her ankles, heavy and sharp. The cuts sting in salt-water. She shifts her feet in a desperate attempt to alleviate the pain, but only stumbles backwards before it is too heavy to move. She cannot even retake her ground and inch further in.

She hears a fuss from the shore. She cannot make out words, just shouting, shuffling. She hopes they are not yelling instructions to her. She cannot hear them. She is afraid to look over her shoulder. The hollow ache of her chest is so consuming already. If she sees anyone she knows, people she is sure are there, she may die of grief before the sea takes her.

She does not realize what is happening until she hears the frantic splashing from behind her. She clenches her eyes shut. She does not want to face whatever this is. She knows it is no one she wants it to be, she knows that Dianna did not lie. No one would miss her, so this is no one to save her.  The best she can hope for is that they will tell her what she is doing wrong, tell her how to make her sacrifice real.

Water splashes up over her shoulder, then a hand clasps down on it, whirling her around. Lona forces her gaze on the other girl, desperate not to look past her to the crowds on the shore.

It is just a naive stranger. As naive as Lona had been without Dianna to teach her. The girl's hair is frizzed from the mist, blue and pink dyed strands pouring sloppy out of her beanie. Against her pale skin, her cheeks are blotchy red from cold, from acne. She is not even out of high school yet.

_There are no good magic schools on the Oregon coast,_ Lona remembers. Maybe this is why this girl hasn't learned the way of things, yet. Why she does not understand that this is the system and there is no opposing it.

Lona's gaze drifts.

Half the witches on the shore have gone, now. Of those remaining, most look angry, their bodies rigid as they stare out to the water with disapproval. Dianna is by a bonfire with four other girls her age, the group of them engrossed in the flames and in conversation with one another. Her head dips as she laughs. She tucks silver hair behind her ear. Lona recognizes this for what it is. Resolute avoidance. An effort not to look at her. Feigned ease.

Her heart fractures. The sound of a crack spreading across the moon's surface is deafening. A deep cut, jagged like a lightning strike.

For a moment the world is still. The crystals - this girl's spell, Lona realizes - have receded back into simple anklets. Her hand feels like fire against Lona's skin, hot against frostbite. The two of them drift, swaying together with the current as its push and pull grows stronger. The sky is falling.

Lona isn't sure what it should sound like. Like Earthquakes. Like comets. Like more than exploding glass shards falling from head to toe inside her hollow body.

The chatter on the shore is loud again, and rising louder. She feels mana in the wind as if they are at the eye of a tornado, countless witches and countless spells of desperation. Barriers being thrown up around the city with haste, shimmering prismatic walls at the edges of her sight.

"When it's not me, it's you," the girl says. Her grip must be hard for it to hurt through the numbness of cold water.

Lona doesn't understand. She tips her head back. The sky is shattering into pieces, the pieces are burning up. Her ears are ringing, she feels the girl shake her, trying to draw her attention back.

"It's too late," Lona whispers, voice cracked and raw with dehydration. She has failed. Let down everyone. Dianna, and the witches, and everyone alive. Because she didn't drown, they will burn, and it's her fault. Instead of one simple death, there will be countless.

The girl in the water with her follows her gaze upwards, leaning back and letting the waves nudge her. The stars are bright, pin-holes on black paper. Speckled paint on canvas.

"It takes a month," the girl says, sincere in the dark. "I've done this before."

Dianna had said the last fracture had been prevented by a sacrifice three decades ago. But this girl has no halo to expose a lie.

She holds out her hand. Lona is not sure what else to do, and so she takes it, allowing the girl to tug her back to the shore. Her wet clothes suction to her body as they step from the waves, heavy and tight like a hundred hands squeezing the breath out of her. A punishment for disappointing the elders.

There are glares pointed her way from too many strangers, stabbing her like knives and twisting in her gut. A crowd of them are approaching; she sees a flash of moon-lit silver hair behind them as Dianna follows meekly in their shadow.

But ahead of them is a boy. A plain boy, a teenager, like this girl. His face is shadowed by a baseball cap under the hood of his sweatshirt. His jeans are worn, covered in tears. He is at the edge of the water, but as they approach he moves to meet them, wading knee-deep into the waves. The girl reaches for him and he reaches back - Lona sees the elders break into a sprint, hears them yelling.  
  
Their fingers touch. Lona feels her mana pulse like a heartbeat.

The sea and the shore, the elders and Dianna. The stars and the fiery sky in the collapse of the world. It all vanishes in an instant.

In a dark, unfamiliar apartment, it is suddenly very, very quiet. With neither wind nor waves to hold her up, Lona's knees hit the floor hard. She watches herself drip dark circles into the carpet. Beside her, the two teenagers gasp for breath with their mana tapped out.

"This is such a bad idea, Cadence," the boy mutters, and the girl chokes on her own laugh. But the way they lean into each other is exhausted - as exhausted as Lona is, and she cannot fathom this. What have they done that is equivalent to waiting for the waves to take them for hours? A teleportation spell is draining, but not to this extent. The crystal shackles around her ankles, still there, but thin, should be nothing.

After everything she has done for Lona, Cadence still speaks as if she isn't in the room. "Seung. I have to save her. We'll figure something out, this time." Her tone is patient. "We have a month." Tired.

Outside, the sky is scarred, slow moving asteroids tearing open the night. The ground shakes on impact as one crashes through the magic barrier, then down into the ocean. They are far from the shore now, but Lona still hears the splash. Like a lightning storm outside the window, like a glowing geyser in the distance. With a sigh, Seung helps Cadence stand, the two of them back-lit by the flash through the window. The lights of the neighborhood flicker off all at once before it fades.

Lona wishes she could see them as heroes, but her heart is sinking like a stone. Her whole body feels heavy, water-weighed down from her clothes and her hair, and the slowly collapsing atmosphere. A month of this. A month of falling stars outside the window until the end of the world. She tells herself to stand, but only curls in on herself tighter and tighter, body aching, shivering. She hears her own pathetic whimpering as she cries.

At least neither of them try to comfort her. They know that she is crying with anger at what they have done more than any fear, more than any relief.

**Author's Note:**

> i don't usually finish anything original. i wouldn't really call this finished. but. finished enough to toss up, i guess? i feel weird about posting this, but i still, ultimately, wanted to.


End file.
